Minnesota nine-year-old who missed a turn while running 5K race ends up winning 10K race instead
A nine-year-old boy who missed a turn while running a 5K race in Minnesota ended up winning a separate 10K race instead. "I was thinking, ‘This is a really long 5K. This is not as usual,’" Kade Lovell of St. Cloud told FOX9.
On September 21, Kade started running the St. Francis Franny Flyer 5K, in Sartell, Minnesota. He became confused at one point while approaching the 5K turn, when a woman told him to "keep going straight."
"A lady told me to keep going straight. So I kept going straight," he told the St. Cloud Times.
Heather Lovell, his mother, realized he didn't cross the 5K finish line, and thought her son was having an off day. However, she became worried when he didn't show up and started driving along the 3.11-mile route looking for him.
"I thought maybe he is having a bad race. It happens. No big deal. Then these other kids coming running by... I was like, ‘He should be in front of them.’ Then I thought maybe he's hurt, maybe he got lost, maybe worse could happen...who knows," she told FOX9.
Heather revealed she was "bawling" with concern when she found no one else had seen her son.
She finally tracked him down after a spectator called her brother-in-law to tell him there was a "little kid who was running really well" in the 10K.
The embattled mother saw her son all alone at the finish line, and thought he had come in last place in the 10K race.
However, she couldn't believe her ears when race organizers told her Kade had finished in first place. At first, she thought they meant he won his age group, but then she learned he actually came first overall, finishing in just over 48 minutes and beating a 40-year-old woman who ended up in second place.
"I accidentally won it, and they've been practising for a long time. I just was really surprised I did that," Kade told FOX9.
According to Kade's mother, he has been running since he was just 18 months old.
"He pretty much popped out running," she said. "Then, at the age of 6, he started running with a cross country club. He currently practices at least three times a week, running two to six miles at a time."
“I like wasting my energy and stuff, and sprinting and just running," Kade told FOX9.
The nine-year-old subsequently ran another 5K race sponsored by the Jacob Wetterling Resource Center, and won that as well. As of now, he is practicing with a special running coach and has already competed in the Junior Olympics. "I'm glad the way it turned out. I couldn't have asked for a better way for it to turn out, from me being scared to being excited and he did well," his mother told the outlet.